THE Cowboys have held on to their top-four chances by a thread after a Johnathan Thurston field goal saw them scrape past a spirited Cronulla Sharks.

It was the star’s second of the night and it took until golden point to seal the 20-19 victory after a stunning Sharks fightback in the final four minutes tied the game at 19-all.

The Cowboys look set to ensure their finals spot and keep their top-four dreams alive when co-captain Thurston pushed the lead out to seven with five minutes left to play.

But some fast hands by Chris Heighington off the resulting kick-off saw him clutch the ball just as it touched the 10 metre line before Sosaia Feki bagged his second try of the night with four minutes left.

It was then down to five-eighth Daniel Holdsworth, who backed up from a failed attempt to smash a field goal of his own from 45 metres out with 24 seconds to go and send the match into extras.

If they are to make the top-four, the Cowboys now must beat a Manly team intent on sealing the minor premiership and must hope the Penrith Panthers are up-ended at home by a Warriors side needing a victory to make the finals.

While the Cowboys end round 25 in fifth spot, Paul Green said a flu which went through the squad and other results in the competition made last night’s game hard to play.

“I didn’t make any point of it during the week, but when we got back from Sydney last week we had a really bad flu go through the team and at one stage there we were considering not training at all,” Green said.

“I’m not making any excuses and I don’t think it was a particularly bad performance by us either and we’ve got to pay some respect to how Cronulla played.

“The flu thing becomes a physical problem and you fatigue a lot quicker and easier and mentally it was a really tough weekend for us to prepare for a game of footy.

“Some great games played over the weekend and everyone was talking about what was going to happen next weekend and we had to sit and watch and go through that while preparing for a game of footy.

“People were talking about us winning by 30 and stuff like that and it’s fraught with danger and mentally the NRL is a tough competition and if you turn up not ready to play and also physically that’s what happened.”

The bookmakers gave the unfancied Sharks a 30-point head start and the match looked to be headed that way when Jason Taumalolo scored within 90 seconds.

The backrower had little trouble bashing his way over but it was after that the match started to deviate from the script thanks to the work of Sharks fullback Michael Gordon.

Gordon made a linebreak through the middle to set up Pat Politoni in the 7th minute before making a 70 metre run in broken play five minutes later.

Valentine Holmes dropped the ball over the line from that play but Feki made no mistake in the 21st minute when he grabbed a Gordon cut-out pass to give the Sharks an unexpected 10-6 lead.

The fullback kicked a difficult conversion from the sideline to double the Cowboys score.

But it seemed to spark the Cowboys into life and the Sharks were twice trapped in their in-goal from Thurston kicks before the half-back took matters into his own hand and ran the ball himself to put the game back on parity.

The Sharks came back out of the half-time break determined and were perhaps a little unlucky to find themselves behind just before the hour when Taumalolo picked up a Thurston grubber which bounced off the padding on the post.

The Cowboy spun and attempted to put the ball down and was held up by Gordon’s leg before falling towards the ground, but the video evidence was insufficient to overturn the try ruling by the on field referees.

Green paid credit to spirited Sharks team which was missing as many players as were available through suspension, sackings and retirements and put the Cowboys to the sword.

“I really want to pay credit to Cronulla, they’re a team of young blokes and they came up here and had a red hot crack,” he said.

“They weren’t worried at all about who they were playing against and they gave it their best shot and played really well.”

Meanwhile, Cowboys five-eighth Robert Lui has signed a one-year deal to stay in North Queensland until the end of the 2015 season, spurning approaches by other teams.